Creepy experiences in the backcountry

Like many of you have mentioned it's the 2 legged predators that are often the worst.

In mid June of 2023 my wife and I took the travel trailer to a lake for a camping weekend. Did some hunting for black bear out there and I came really close to getting a really nice one but didn't get a good angle to get it into the vitals. It was pretty close and he bolted really quick since we both were surprised to see each other. Had I got him this next part wouldn't have happened.

We went back to camp and were enjoying our time around the campfire and doing a little fishing. We were just thinking about packing up when a couple of good old boys came down off of the highway down to the lake on their Harley's and cracked open some beers. This is remote country with not a lot of people or traffic. I got a bad feeling about them so started to pack up our lawn chairs but made a bit of small talk with them while doing so. I thought it was obvious that these guys were sketchy but apparently my wife thought I knew them and decided to come down while I was going up to the trailer with my arms full. The one guy all of a sudden decides to move his bike and almost hits my wife and is acting weird. Now I really want to get out of there.

I finished packing up everything and made sure they saw I had a rifle while doing so. I got mad at my wife for just standing around when by now she knows these guys are up to no good. I had to go one more time down to the lake to check for something and while I'm down there the one guy says "why don't you leave your wife behind" and it was obvious what that scumbag meant. I just stayed as calm as possible and we got the heck out of there.

The whole thing ended up causing a big rift between us because for some reason she blamed me, not her poor reading of the situation initially. We have both talked about it and decided to do things differently next time. There's not much I could have done differently but learned a couple of things to do differently if it happens again.

1- Don't assume that she knows what I'm thinking. It should have been obvious to her but wasn't. Quietly saying lets get out of here to her would have made a big difference.

2- Stay calm and don't get mad at her, it would have made a big difference. She was shaken by that time and was freezing up a bit.

3- She never heard the comment from the one guy and I told her. Should never have said anything until much later, like weeks later when everything was calm. Not as we are driving away.

We have since moved away from the area but I sure do miss it, I was born up there and lived 55 years there before moving to the southern interior of BC. had many wonderful experiences there but only a couple that weren't. Almost everyone we met were decent people but these two yahoos weren't that's for sure. Amazing how something that's going well can change in an instant. I always camp armed with something and always will, you just never know when you'll need something.

I'll post another story in the next day or two when I get the chance.
 
gerry35 said:
Like many of you have mentioned it's the 2 legged predators that are often the worst.
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Yep.

When we first moved south, we were doing a lot of exploration.
I did not need to work at that point, and we simply invested our time discovering our new home.

One afternoon my Lady & I were on a local river, trying for salmon.
Along comes a raft and a couple of tubers.
Raft hits the bank and a very large fellow jumps off it and yells at us Ypippee Ki Yay MF!
Then starts stalking swiftly towards us.

I immediately unlimbered my 1911 (still had a valid carry permit then) and loudly suggested he get his ass as far from us as possible.
Ho saw I was serious, and got out of Dodge rather quickly.

Gives me pause to think what might have been if I had not been packing.

No carry permits for us Biologist types any more.
But a couple of large Wolf Hybrids appear to pack the same effect.

Cheers
 
I freaked someone out once. In the PNW hunting elk during archery. I was camouflaged up with my face mask ect sitting up in some cedar limbs. I heard something coming my way down the trail. 2 other guys. They just plopped down like 3 feet from my boot and started drinking water and having a snack. I waited a few and then asked them if they where going to share. Scared the hell out of them. Quite funny afterwards we all got a laugh.
 
Not backcountry and not creepy to me but my wife thinks other wise. Tonight the dogs were raising hell and we could tell something had them angry. We went outside and saw two coyotes among the cattle in the spot light. We jumped in the pickup and drove around the pasture trying to get a shot, but couldn’t get a shot with all the cattle and the coyote just stayed out side of the lights reach. Back at the house about the time I closed the door the coyotes started howling again. I decided to walk out and see if I could kill one in foot. My wife decided she wanted to go. We walked about 400 yards out and couldn’t find the coyotes. So I decided to turn the call on and turned on female challenge howls, and then coyote fights. Not one minute later I turned the light on and could see three coyotes about 300 yards coming hard. Turned the light back off and set my 22-250 up in the direction they were coming from. When I got situated I turned the light back on and the lead coyote was 50 yards on a dead run to the call at my feet. My wife was freaked out. I shot the first one at about 30 yards but couldn’t get a clear shot at the other two . On the walk back to the house, my wife told me in a quivering voice that she was not a fan and will never go with me again. I love the rush of calling at night.
 
If you don't believe in the supernatural, come sit in the Southern Appalachian mountains for a few evenings. I guarantee you will become a believer. I once had a skeptical fishing buddy who would tease anyone who brought up these fanciful tales. So we took him camping near brown mountain. Lets just say he went home a changed man lol...The Brown Mountain lights have yet to be explained.
 
TroutMcghee said:
If you don't believe in the supernatural, come sit in the Southern Appalachian mountains for a few evenings. I guarantee you will become a believer. I once had a skeptical fishing buddy who would tease anyone who brought up these fanciful tales. So we took him camping near brown mountain. Lets just say he went home a changed man lol...The Brown Mountain lights have yet to be explained.
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Nope. Your guarantee is void. Didn't work for me.
 
atfrith said:
I've posted this here before, but we ran into this super strange little...structure? Gave me the creeps the first time we found it last year.

View attachment 113226 View attachment 113227
View attachment 113228

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A buddy of mine who used to fall timber told me a story about a similar structure.

Him and his falling partner had left their falling vests and axes in the woods the night before and had the axes imbedded in a tree with the vests hanging on it. The next morning the axes and vests were on the same tree, just 8 foot or so higher than they left em. No skidder tracks or any other signs of pranking going on. They get to poking around and find a hut made of pine and Doug fir boughs. Inside was lined with cedar and white fir limbs. Their boss came to see why they handed started cutting trees yet. He saw the guy and told them to get the hell out of there. They left that whole section unlogged.

Supposedly a couple deer hunters shot a Sasquatch later that year in that area.
 
A buddy of mine, his wife and I went to gig frogs one night. We had a ball catching frogs, filled two gunny sacks in a couple hours. It got to be midnight or so and we decided to catch a couple more and call it a night. Something for lack of a better description went PSST at us. Just like someone going psst at you but louder and deeper than a person doing it. That freaked us out pretty so we headed to the pickup. What ever it was paralleled us in the timber out of flash light range making the psst noise. When we got to the truck it did it 6 times in rapid succession. To this day I don't know what it was.
 
Superx3 said:
Not backcountry and not creepy to me but my wife thinks other wise. Tonight the dogs were raising hell and we could tell something had them angry. We went outside and saw two coyotes among the cattle in the spot light. We jumped in the pickup and drove around the pasture trying to get a shot, but couldn’t get a shot with all the cattle and the coyote just stayed out side of the lights reach. Back at the house about the time I closed the door the coyotes started howling again. I decided to walk out and see if I could kill one in foot. My wife decided she wanted to go. We walked about 400 yards out and couldn’t find the coyotes. So I decided to turn the call on and turned on female challenge howls, and then coyote fights. Not one minute later I turned the light on and could see three coyotes about 300 yards coming hard. Turned the light back off and set my 22-250 up in the direction they were coming from. When I got situated I turned the light back on and the lead coyote was 50 yards on a dead run to the call at my feet. My wife was freaked out. I shot the first one at about 30 yards but couldn’t get a clear shot at the other two . On the walk back to the house, my wife told me in a quivering voice that she was not a fan and will never go with me again. I love the rush of calling at night.
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Man I love that rush too. I do carry a sidearm but it’s an extreme rush night hunting
 
Bowhunting elk in CO Unit 551 a few years ago. Was sitting on a forest road at dusk waiting for my buddies to pick me up. Unbeknownst to me, they were changing a flat tire. As light continued to drain away, I became aware of something moving in the timber edge up the road behind me. Out pops a house cat. I thought what the hell is a house cat doing way up here. No wait.... must be a bobcat.... no wait.... has a long tail.... it's a..... baby mountain lion! It trotted right up the road towards me stopped a few yards from me, looked at me for a few seconds, then let out a little snarl and trotted off. My immediate thought was "Where's Mama?" The fact that I had given my .40 cal HK USP to my buddy's Dad that morning because he was worried about bears didn't make me feel any better about the situation.
 
A friend of my grandpa's was hunting bears with hounds in the Kings River drainage in California. He hunted off horseback and would go as close as he could on horse and then walk into the tree. The dogs bayed up in a canyon that was too steep to take a horse so Cat walked in on em. They were bayed in a area that had burned previously and the trees had grown back 10-15 foot tall. Cat said that when he was making his way into the dogs he could see them being pitched up in the air above the tops of the trees. The hounds beat him back to the horse and pickup. He never saw what it was the dogs had bayed so he couldn't say what it was other than likely not a bear.
 
TroutMcghee said:
If you don't believe in the supernatural, come sit in the Southern Appalachian mountains for a few evenings. I guarantee you will become a believer. I once had a skeptical fishing buddy who would tease anyone who brought up these fanciful tales. So we took him camping near brown mountain. Lets just say he went home a changed man lol...The Brown Mountain lights have yet to be explained.
Click to expand...


I wasn't born and raised in Southern Appalachia, more like an hour away, but we moved to the Western NC mountains about 8 or so years ago. I've heard all of the old wives tales, don't stare into the woods at night, don't whistle outside at night, if you hear someone calling for you in the woods don't go, etc. I also live in an old house, built in 1887 and originally a Methodist Church until 1920. The previous owners had some experiences, my son has said he had an experience in the past when he was around 8 (felt like someone under his bed kicking up at his mattress when he was sleeping). I have personally not had anything that creeped me out here (only paranormal experience I've had, I posted it a long ways back in this thread).

Anyways, two nights ago my son had to go for a run. Long story short, he skipped out on some conditioning at his middle school baseball practice and he had two options to rectify the situation (I'm one of the coaches). Basically teaching accountability. 1) call the head coach, tell him what he skipped, accept any punishment he doles out. 2) he has to run for me at home, and it's going to be worse than the running he skipped on. He chose #2.

I told him he will have to run about 90 minutes, and we'll finish up with some sprints in the yard after that. He started running around 7ish, the sun was still out. My wife is worried about him running in the road at dark, so she decides she's going to go follow him in the car. We live in a rural area, but there are houses around, honestly the only thing that worried me is a domestic dog going after him, it's a safe area with hardly any traffic. Up the road from our house is a development that was started but never finished. It has a gravel road, a few street lights, they keep it mowed, a couple lots just hit the market, but the entire time we've lived here no houses were ever built (I use it to dump guts after I clean animals and go for walks). I wouldn't have sent him up there in the dark solo, he'd get freaked out and I wouldn't blame him. Since my wife was following him, I told her to make him run halfway up into the development (goes up hill), turn around and come home, and he'll be done with that part. He gets back with my wife following him, runs his sprints, and he's all done. He did great.

I'm in the kitchen talking with my son and wife after, and she tells him to tell me what happened. He said when he was running up that neighborhood he heard something whistle at him and clear as day say his name twice. My wife said she never whistled, never called his name, and was just following behind him. He's not the kind of kid that would make something like that up. He seemed pretty chill about it ... I got the heebeejeebees just thinking about his story when I was putting the dogs up later that night.
 
Wallace said:
I wasn't born and raised in Southern Appalachia, more like an hour away, but we moved to the Western NC mountains about 8 or so years ago. I've heard all of the old wives tales, don't stare into the woods at night, don't whistle outside at night, if you hear someone calling for you in the woods don't go, etc. I also live in an old house, built in 1887 and originally a Methodist Church until 1920. The previous owners had some experiences, my son has said he had an experience in the past when he was around 8 (felt like someone under his bed kicking up at his mattress when he was sleeping). I have personally not had anything that creeped me out here (only paranormal experience I've had, I posted it a long ways back in this thread).

Anyways, two nights ago my son had to go for a run. Long story short, he skipped out on some conditioning at his middle school baseball practice and he had two options to rectify the situation (I'm one of the coaches). Basically teaching accountability. 1) call the head coach, tell him what he skipped, accept any punishment he doles out. 2) he has to run for me at home, and it's going to be worse than the running he skipped on. He chose #2.

I told him he will have to run about 90 minutes, and we'll finish up with some sprints in the yard after that. He started running around 7ish, the sun was still out. My wife is worried about him running in the road at dark, so she decides she's going to go follow him in the car. We live in a rural area, but there are houses around, honestly the only thing that worried me is a domestic dog going after him, it's a safe area with hardly any traffic. Up the road from our house is a development that was started but never finished. It has a gravel road, a few street lights, they keep it mowed, a couple lots just hit the market, but the entire time we've lived here no houses were ever built (I use it to dump guts after I clean animals and go for walks). I wouldn't have sent him up there in the dark solo, he'd get freaked out and I wouldn't blame him. Since my wife was following him, I told her to make him run halfway up into the development (goes up hill), turn around and come home, and he'll be done with that part. He gets back with my wife following him, runs his sprints, and he's all done. He did great.

I'm in the kitchen talking with my son and wife after, and she tells him to tell me what happened. He said when he was running up that neighborhood he heard something whistle at him and clear as day say his name twice. My wife said she never whistled, never called his name, and was just following behind him. He's not the kind of kid that would make something like that up. He seemed pretty chill about it ... I got the heebeejeebees just thinking about his story when I was putting the dogs up later that night.
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Don't have any direct kin from the Appalachians but know some folks from there and have relations in the Ozarks where they have similar legends to the Appalachians. Number one thing I've heard em all say is if you hear something whistle or say your name in the woods or the dark is no you didn't and don't talk about.
 
Grandpa's grandma was born in the late 1800 or early 1900s at the least. She went to California from Arkansas five times, first time there and back in a covered wagon and the last time in an air plane. She told some stories that grandpa, his brother and their sisters have told me.

One was from when they were going to California the first time. They went to make camp and the guy who owned to place they were camped on rode by and said you can camp here but that cabin down in the crick is haunted. They dismissed that until late that night they heard what sounded like people shouting and logs rolling around in the cabin. They went and checked it out and the cabin was empty and had dirt floors. They left that night.

Another one she told was her and her sister went to take care of an old lady who was going to die for the night. Her and her sister both say that night a ''panther" jumped up on the roof of the cabin and tried digging in the roof over the bed of the old lady. They would push her bed to one end of the cabin and the panther would follow and start digging again. All night that went on until the sun came up the next day.

She also told stories of the big hairy men who lived in the woods. My grandpa and his siblings all say that she was honest as the day is long and had no reason to lie about any thing like that.
 
Don't mean to be a thread big but I remember these stories as a type others.

Grandpa and a cousin of mine were bear hunting or something like that one evening and the dogs bayed off in the Middle Fork of the Feather River in California. They started down in after em as the sun set for the day. They said those dogs were barking every breath. All of a sudden the woods got deathly quiet. The dogs shut up and beat them back to the truck. Grandpa and my cousin aren't spooked by too much and they both say that freaked em out
 
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